Can Agnostics Praise the Supreme God of Monotheism When They Want?

[Randwolf]

Pious, in reply to your post #18:

"Originally Posted by Randwolf
I believe many "Agnostics" (and the various subsets thereof) mostly object to the personal, anthropomorphic "God" as described in the Bible, Q'uran and other holy books.”

No, I don't think religious texts describe God as "anthropomorphic".

Well, if you accept the premise that we were created in God's image, then God himself must, in turn, be an image of us. Or am I missing some sort of logical fallacy here? If you do accept it, than the God of the Book has many "human" attributes, jealousy being one that has already been explicitly cited and sourced. This smacks of anthropomorphism to me...

See, for example, these verses:

“The Quran, 6:103
"No vision can grasp Him, but His grasp is over all vision: He is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things."

Gee, Pious, this pretty much serves as a working definition of Ignosticism.* (If you use the word "Him" as a placeholder for purposes of discussion, of course)

“The Bible, Exodus 20:3-5
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth."
"Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God."

”These texts claim God is beyond our understanding.

These texts, IMHO, are simply commandments, probably around 10 of them, and I see no evidence supporting your assertion that we do not attempt to apply human attributes to the "unfathomable". At least according to "religious texts", which could have been written pretty much at any time by anyone. If anything, your quotes would seem to bolster my position:

• "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." - Implies pride as well as the possibility of other gods. Furthermore, if we can not know God, since...
• "No vision can grasp Him, but His grasp is over all vision: He is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things.", we would have a great deal of difficulty distinguishing God if we ran into him at the supermarket - after all, he is "above all comprehension". As I said before, this passage from the Q'uran serves rather nicely as a definition of "Ignosticism", don't you think? (see * below for dictionary definition)
• "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image..." - How could we possibly do this is if we tried? Graven image of what? As soon as you start making statues and the like, you end up with something resembling humans - hence anthropomorphism.
• "Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God." - Ahhh, back to the good old jealousy, certainly a trait humans possess in abundance. As soon as we start "[interpreting] what is not human or personal in terms of human or personal characteristics" we are playing, by definition, with anthropomorphism. (from the Merriam-Webster dictionary.)

It would seem that regardless of whether there is "something more" or not, we are apparently not meant to understand such.

Hence your position = "fail"

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* Definition of Ignosticism from "Rational Wiki"

Ignosticism is a theological position that the subject of debate (god or gods) has not been coherently defined. This goes one step further than agnosticism. Whereas agnosticism states that "you can't really know either way" regarding the existence or non-existence of God, ignosticism posits that "you haven't even agreed on what you're discussing."

The reasoning behind this is fairly sound; as God means so many different things to so many different people, there is no one definition of God that can be tested, and because everything is so up in the air, the question isn't even worth considering. Ignosticism is essentially all about the definition of God, and that all religions, and even agnostics and atheists assume too much when taking their philosophical positions.

It is sometimes considered synonymous with "theological noncognitivism", which states that talking about "god" is cognitively meaningless, although it is slightly distinct in that ignostics would be happy to jump off the fence if a decent enough definition of "God" was put forward.

 

[Pious]

My point is that to conceive of 'God' as a person is anthropomorphism. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all have a fundamentally anthropomorphic conception of their deity.

I think both Judaism and Islam strictly REJECT anthropomorphic conception of God. Can you cite versus from the Torah, the Quran, or other texts which the followers of these religions consider sacred, to corroborate your point?

That's what many conventional believers in these religious traditions would likely say. But it's also something that most agnostics would be extremely skeptical about.

Of course.

The problem that presents for the 'wager' is that the 'wager' assumes that there's only one legitimate religious tradition (Christianity in Pascal's thinking) and that man's only choice is to take it or leave it. But today religion's no longer a Christianity-or-nothing matter. There are countless religious options out there. Even if by chance one of them offers a true path to eternal salvation (something that most agnostics are probably strongly inclined to doubt), the chances of choosing it at random is small indeed.

The overall probability that at least one of all of these religions is correct is still one half for an agnostic. So an agnostic may be inclined to check the correlation of each of these religions with known scientific knowledge, and check which of them is true (if any of them is true).

And that's assuming that one could win entry into heaven by going through the religious motions in a calculated self-interested manner without any underlying belief and faith, which is doubtful in just about any religious tradition as well. (That's a problem that Pascal never seems to have recognized.)

Pascal wasn't different from mainstream religious people -- I mean even religious people probably don't completely believe in their religion. They sure do follow their religion, but their faith decreases and increases over time.

These texts, IMHO, are simply commandments, probably around 10 of them, and I see no evidence supporting your assertion that we do not attempt to apply human attributes to the "unfathomable".

No, those cited verses from the Quran and the Bible don't describe God as anthropomorphic... And here are three other examples:

The Quran 42:11
There is nothing whatever like unto Him.

The Quran 112:4
And there is none like unto Him.

The Bible, Jeremiah 10:6
There is none like You, O LORD.

In all these verses, anthropomorphism is explicitly rejected.

[*]"No vision can grasp Him, but His grasp is over all vision: He is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things."... As I said before, this passage from the Q'uran serves rather nicely as a definition of "Ignosticism", don't you think?

Yes, there is an interesting similarity!

Ignosticism: nothing can be thought of that the word "God" could refer to.
Monotheism: there is a God that can't be comprehended.

It would seem that regardless of whether there is "something more" or not, we are apparently not meant to understand such.

Hence your position = "fail"

How?? If we are not meant to comprehend that "something more", it doesn't make it impossible for it to exist.

 

[Yazata]

I think both Judaism and Islam strictly REJECT anthropomorphic conception of God. Can you cite versus from the Torah, the Quran, or other texts which the followers of these religions consider sacred, to corroborate your point?

You already did that for me, further down in your last post:

No, those cited verses from the Quran and the Bible don't describe God as anthropomorphic... And here are three other examples:

The Quran 42:11
There is nothing whatever like unto Him.

The Quran 112:4
And there is none like unto Him.

The Bible, Jeremiah 10:6
There is none like You, O LORD.

In all these verses, anthropomorphism is explicitly rejected.

No, it's being explicitly stated. What do you suppose that that the word "him" implies? The Torah, the Bible and the Quran are filled with references to God's emotions, God's awareness, God's plans and intentions, and God's actions. Theism imagines its divine principle as if it was a giant invisible person, an intelligent conscious awareness, to which all of the psychological predicates that people use with each other meaningfully apply.

The overall probability that at least one of all of these religions is correct is still one half for an agnostic.

Where did that come from?

Agnostics question whether human beings can have knowledge of transcendent things. In other words, purported transcendental entities like 'Gods' are consigned to the category of the unknown. By its nature, the unknown is an unbounded category and may be effectively infinite in size. (There are any number of things that humans don't know.)

Seen in that light, the odds that any particular human historical religious tradition just happens to be the one unique truth about ultimate matters would seem to be vanishingly unlikely. The odds are much better that whatever the cosmic explanations may actually be, they aren't anything that human beings have even thought of. Perhaps we never will. The ultimate principles of being itself may exceed human cognitive powers and be such that human beings can't even conceive of them.

 

[Pious]

No, it's being explicitly stated. What do you suppose that that the word "him" implies?

It refers to God of course. But according to Muslims and Jews, God can't be placed in any gender category, since it would be comparing God to his creation which goes against the verses in post #22.

Theism imagines its divine principle as if it was a giant invisible person, an intelligent conscious awareness, to which all of the psychological predicates that people use with each other meaningfully apply.

Yes, there are many types of theism and some do imagine god(s) who is/are comprehensible. But monotheism doesn't, however.

Seen in that light, the odds that any particular human historical religious tradition just happens to be the one unique truth about ultimate matters would seem to be vanishingly unlikely. The odds are much better that whatever the cosmic explanations may actually be, they aren't anything that human beings have even thought of. Perhaps we never will.

I think it's true for atheists and igtheists.

 

[Big Chiller]

Hi all,

In monotheism (eg. Islam, Judaism and ancient Zoroastrianism), God is: inherently One, Eternal, Absolute; and there is none like unto Him; and God is worthy of praise.

But according to agnostics, it is possible that the supreme God of monotheism may exist!!! So since agnostics DON'T totally reject, can they praise the supreme God too, when they want to?

Pious

An agnostic cannot praise God because if he/she does that then at the moment of that action he/she is a believer but after that he/she reverts back to his/her agnosticism. There's a chance of an agnostic praying to God when he/she faces danger but other than that why would an agnostic praise God?